Adjustments: Games of Red, Yellow, and Green
by Guardinthena
Summary: Pt2.As Phage tries to heal her crippled sanity after Soundwave's mental attack she comes to believe that she is twinkling out of existence, unaware that Soundwave has returned to finish his job.
1. Chapter 1

**Authors Note**: Part 3 of the Adjustments series, sequel to 'The Golden Hour.' Transformers is not my own, but the character Phage is. Also, I'd like to apologize for everyone that stuck through the horrible mess that was the orginal piece of this. I think I more than tripped up on my own feet on that one, but somehow twisted my body into a horrible shape as well. So, here is the fanfic again, redone, edited, and hopefully a million times better than the last. P.S. -Cellandra is not mentioned or brought up in this! (Guess I just lied though hmm?) My brother already thoroughly smacked me silly for that crackpot idea among other things.

Rated Mature for explicit violence, coarse language, and adult-oriented themes.

* * *

**Chapter 1**

'**What **_**is**_** my age?'**

The self-posed question was driving her up the fucking wall. Phage wracked her synthetic brain, or her CPU, or whatever the hell it was now. The human-turned-femme was twenty when she met Jazz for the first time, all the way back when she was going to college up in Washington, right before the Insecticon Massacre of Klickitat County. Afterwards, she'd spent nearly a year with the Autobots trying to recuperate, or had it only been a few months? Damn it. She couldn't remember. Time blurred together for her indefinitely. Hell, something she had done just two days ago she could have thought she did a week before. The Insecticon Massacre seemed a whole other lifetime ago, and in a way it was.

Twenty-one. Yes. That was it. She was certain. '_I was still twenty-one when I went on that world cruise. Then twenty-four when…'_

Phage's whole memory drive glazed over. There was nothing but a huge gaping hole in her memory banks conveniently placed in the timeframe during her sightseeing in Africa and ending when she woke up in _The Ark_'s Medbay– as a synthetic Transformer no less. Ratchet said that it was some sort of selective amnesia or something like that. Bottom line of it was that her own mind had wiped the memory of her metamorphosis from her brain just to keep her sane.

Not that she was sane right now. Artistic types were never sane.

But that didn't tell her her _age_.

Twenty-four? Twenty-six?

Shit. What'd it even matter anyway? Age didn't matter to metal gods like the Autobots or Decepticons.

A shiver raced up and down her spine.

Phage hugged herself into a tighter little ball as she sought comfort and protection as she tried to cycle down into recharge in the Medbay. Her side panels twitched now and again as she tried to relax, unwind from the tedious ordeal that left her in a state of shock. Despite her ability to compartmentalize, Phage kept finding it difficult to shuffle the incident in the Labs into a little back room. Not even trying to focus on ultimately pointless self-banter and arguments -like her age- was helping her to distance herself any. She could still see Wheeljack's mangled corpse in her mind's eye as he lay sprawled out across the floor of the Labs like a broken toy as he drowned in a pool of his own vibrant lifeblood. The numb mass of metal and wires that had been his body prior to the accident was scorched as if some disturbed child had sought to set ablaze his own playthings just for the kick of it.

She could still smell the burnt metal, the smoke, taste the electricity in the air…

…the urgency that gripped her fuel pump –

-the _fear_.

And then she heard it, like distant thunder. Ghost figments sent to torment her. The snapping of the cable, the screaming of the falling girder…

Phage's body shook again as she tried to cycle down into recharge, desperately tried to cull her mind and drift off into a visionless sleep, the one place where she could escape the pressures of reality, but her ordeal kept her awake despite the pull of her systems to send her into recharge. Through her own form of stubbornness or some perverse need to prove herself strong to her Autobot comrades, she refused to man up to the shock that she was grappling with. She refused to tell Ratchet what she was going through because she felt that she needed to wrestle with it herself without any assistance.

After all, how often had _they_ done the same? How often had they been locked down in battle, or far away from any assistance and had to deal with this same thing by themselves? She refused to admit and was determined to prove herself. What she wanted most though, if only for reassurance, was for somebody to take hold of her and tell her that everything was alright now, that everything would be okay, but she wasn't that delusional. She couldn't see any of them –the Autobots – helping to sooth her shock with hugs and cuddles and sweet nothing-words. Jazz, Brawn, Sideswipe, Bumblebee, Optimus, Prowl, Wheeljack, Ratchet, even Sparkplug – they were war veterans. With respects to Sparkplug, they had lived through five million years of war. Cuddles and hugs to sooth the shock of battle and stress was long past them. She couldn't look to them for it for that reason, because of what they were – how _old_ they were. For her, a human-turned-femme, nine million years was the span of the high powers that be. To live that long, to have the knowledge of millennia, was unthinkable to her tiny mind. To ask something from an entity that had lived that long, to ask them to feel for something that was new and a baby by comparison was unreasonable to her because they, in all their great age, must have forgotten what it was like or view it as weakness, even forgotten how to feel at some point in time.

She could just imagine herself asking Ratchet for a hug and his response would be to sedate her to calm her nerves. Wheeljack…she didn't know to be honest. Wheeljack was always chirpy, easy-go-lucky, never say die. Perhaps, despite his god-like age, he would offer her a hug, understand her need for it though he himself couldn't remember why.

Sparkplug though, wizened in his human ways, still had emotions. He was still new and understanding to life, unlike the Autobots, or at least in the way she viewed them. Well, some of them. She could ask a hug from Sparkplug and he would understand and give it freely. No questions asked. He would give it and not judge because he still _remembered_ what it was like to be in her position.

Because he was _human_.

He wasn't one of the metal gods.

Another jolt. Her body shook as if from a cold chill. She cradled herself for comfort and affection but the result was self-afflicting numbness. The emerald green femme felt as though her entire body was shaking apart, and yet she knew that she wasn't moving at all. She could feel a familiar pressure building up in her throat, disguised as a haggard sigh, but she knew better. It would begin there and swiftly grow unchecked from that if she released it. She would break down into tears right there in Medbay, right in front of Ratchet, Wheeljack, and Sparkplug –but she refused to allow herself too. She swallowed back the lump in her throat, hugged herself tighter – afraid to let Ratchet catch on that she was shaking.

She couldn't afford to. She couldn't afford to look weak in front of timeless metal gods. They already looked down on her for her youth, because she was a femme, because she had been _human_. She didn't need them to know that they were right. That she was all that they expected from somebody of her ilk.

She would prove them all wrong.

It had to begin with conquering her current physical predicament. And the key to that was her ability to compartmentalize. Only she had a difficult time of doing that if another situation didn't call for her to act normal, to appear normal, or to be stronger than what she felt like back in the Labs. Otherwise she was just prone to let her mind devour itself. It was something that she had been allowing it to do for years now, especially since her reformate from human to a Trans-Sync, a derogatory term coined by Sunstreaker to further remind her of her lower status than them. The bastard.

Abruptly, an idea hit her with a force similar to Ironhide clothes-lining her in training. The grizzled old 'bot had learned straight away that one way for her to immediately bypass any awkward situation and draw her into putting out her full potential was by playing on her stubborn streak and getting her angry. She'd already known it for years, but it had been such a relief for him to discover it sometime into their training together. She had always thought that anger was part of the training for soldiers. Make them hate their teachers so that it created a disliking for them, and thus the want on the soldier's part to strike them. Ironhide needed her to strike at him to teach her, and for awhile she had just been shy about it because he was her friend…or acquaintance rather. More of an awkwardness given her prior civ life. When they first began training, it was like he didn't know that old school rule, but then she supposed that maybe it was that she was femme and he didn't know how to train femmes. Maybe he thought there was some other way.

Boy was he relieved when he found out it wasn't all that different after all.

Just like now. Thinking of how much she hated Sunstreaker just made her pain all the more bearable. It placed the events in the Labs just a bit more into the past, making it easier for her to slid back into the present and carry on with her life. If she just concentrated on how often Sunstreaker had made some snide comment about her, how many times he had called her a Trans-Sync, how often he tore her down behind her back and to her face, the more she got angry at him, focused on that golden fucker, the easier it was for her to regain control of herself and disentangle the horrible memories of the Lab and Wheeljack into a dusty, cob-webbed cabinet in a gloom drenched corner of her mind.

She wanted to smile, but the tear on her cheek prevented her from doing just that. So she settled for a mental one, proud of herself and her cleverness as she began to accomplish gaining some bit of recharge in five minutes in what had taken her over an hour to do while she had been depressed and attempting to ignore her problem with meaningless self-posed questions.

Guess she owed Sunstreaker a bit of thanks too. The self-absorbed fragger was good for something after all.

Phage started to settle down into a more comfortable state, permitting a half-smile on the side of her flexi-metal face that wasn't damaged. She entertained ideas of kicking Sunstreaker's ass from here to Eris and back, even though she was aware that if she ever did try to do that in real life she'd probably have her arm ripped off in round one. Still, it was nice to entertain her own fantasies even if they were delusional from time to time.

In amusing her vicious thoughts her cranial surge reemerged after it's near hour and a half disappearance from its first manifestation during the incident in the Labs. It was dull but apparent and the minor affliction that it caused her, mingled with the burning pain in her cheek and the subsiding searing pain in her chest, only fueled her brutal dreams of vengeance against the Golden Terror.

Even that lump she had felt in her throat that had threatened her to break down and cry had transformed. She wanted to scream in frustration and anger at Sunstreaker, she wanted to scream at the horrible memories she had gained of Soundwave as he tried to mentally devour her mind and her uncertainty of how much damage he'd actually caused. She wanted to scream at the terrifying memory of Starscream hunting her down through _The _Ark, cooing and whispering sweetly to her like a good friend, his crimson optics aglow in the dead sections of the ship as she fled before him. She wanted to scream at the unfairness of her exile from her former species and for the loss of everything that she had been. She wanted to vent her frustration and anguish and bitterness to the heavens, to let Ratchet know just how bad she was, to let all the Autobots realize just how badly she was faring, how much she was tearing herself apart mentally to fit in amongst them…

Too Adjust.

"ARAAAG!"

That was _not_ her.

_**KLAAANG!**_

And neither was _that_.

Fuel pump escalating in her chest, adrenaline kicking in, Phage executed a neat roll off the medberth and onto the other side, away from the roar and the sharp clanging of metal on metal that she recognized only to be as a metallic fist meeting metal body. No sooner had she landed on her feet than she had her duel laser pistols pulled from subspace. She generally preferred the bigger, larger, more powerful weapons herself like her rifle, only she reserved that for long range and open spaces. The small and personal pistol, though generally weak, served its point in close quarters with a precise precession shot and speed.

Just as soon as she had her pistols out and the safety off, she chanced a peek around the corner to figure out what was going on. No sooner then she had couple things seemed to happen at once. The first thing that happened was that she noticed Autobot X (currently in the possession of Wheeljack's spark) following up through the motion of slugging Ratchet a good right hook across the face. The CMO hit the floor, knocking over a trolley of replacement parts and medical tools that she figured they'd been using to repair Wheeljack's damaged body with. The last thing she noticed, or the first thing she heard, or however or whatever order anyone preferred to register the simultaneous events in, was Sparkplug. The graying haired man had a haunted look tainting his face, making him look drawn and closer to his actual age. He was waving his hands in the air trying to get Autobot X/Wheeljack's attention as he stood on the medberth that occupied the mad scientist's body. He was shouting at the roaring mismatched Frankenstein of a Transformer.

Phage flinched when she saw him. He was recalling the last time Autobot X went on a rampage, she was sure of it. And that look on Sparkplug's face, was that how she looked now? Ghostly pale, wide-eyed, slack-jawed as if she'd suddenly been struck dumb. She was damn sure that there was some military term for it, but she couldn't recall it in her current state of mind – and especially not when her headache decided to magnify itself upon registering the racket until she was sure that it had a black heart all of its own.

"Wheeljack! No! 'Jack!"

Fuck. Could the cosmos leave her and her private fears alone and just stop making anything that she said or predicted come true? Damn it all. She'd known this would happen, she _knew_ but had hoped against it. What was she supposed to do now? How was she supposed to stop a mech built from the parts of every member of _The Ark_'s original crew when it had taken Prime's own laser cannon rifle to just '_knock'_ Spike back to his senses the first time? How was she supposed to stop it and not kill or threaten Wheeljack's spark?

Damn her soul to the lower levels of hell. This was all her fault.

"Wheeljack! Please!" Sparkplug went on. "Get a hold of yourself! Remember what happened with Spike?"

The raging Autobot X's guttural roar died off, remembered only as it echoed off against the distant Medbay walls and rebounded back on them. The mix-matched mechaniod turned on Sparkplug, blue optics wild with madness as he growled at the small, offensive organic life form. Sparkplug took half a step back, his hands dropping halfway back to his sides. He suddenly seemed uncertain now as if he just realized where he was and his own frailty around mechanized sentients.

Autobot X saw him (because Wheeljack was truly lost to them at that point in time) and It's lip components curled up into a sneer, bearing Its steel teeth. Its optics darkened, portraying the evident hatred It felt as It reached for him with Its only purple hand.

"Wheeljack! _**Don't!**_ It's me! _**Sparkplug**_, remember!?"

Even as Sparkplug shouted it, his tone shrill, he started to make for some hiding hole where Autobot X couldn't reach him. Only wherever it was that Sparkplug had been planning on hiding out in he never got that far. In one fell swoop Autobot X scooped him up and into the air causing the little human to cry out in a fit of vertigo.

She didn't think it was possible, but her optics got even bigger. That wrenching feeling in the pit of her gut knotted up even fuller until it made her physically sick. Her fuel pump had lodged itself up somewhere in her throat and she was certain that prior shaking she had been feeling for an hour before had made itself manifest now in her trembling hands. Uncertain of what to do other than to wait for some heavier backup, she watched as Autobot X lifted Sparkplug up to his face, where It proceeded to glare at him as if It were trying to Will him to disappear, as if the metallic Frankenstein couldn't wrap Its demented mind around the existence of a creature – a sentient being – made out of carbon life.

Sparkplug's pleas grated on her audios like nails on a chalkboard. That look in his eyes, the shrill, reedy-tone of his voice, she didn't think that it would ever leave her. She had always known him to be so composed, level-headed, proud…seeing him like this, hearing him like this, it just pushed her a little more over the edge…if she hadn't already tripped over it anyway.

"Wheeljack, please!" Sparkplug practically begged of Autobot-X. "You don't want to do this! I know you don't! Remember Spike! Remember what happened last time?!"

A glimmer of recognition sparked across those alien optics, but it wasn't the type of recognition that Sparkplug was looking for. If at all possible, Autobot X remembered, and it was that distant memory that triggered a new wave of aggression. Phage thought that her fuel pump would quit when the beast of a mech got up close to Sparkplug. The faint image of him biting Sparkplug in half came to mind and it was enough of a shock to snap her back into action, mostly because the universe seemed to get its kicks out of making anything she thought of some sort of prophetic verse, and she really, really didn't need to live with the manic memories of Autobot X biting Sparkplug in half – she had enough of those from during the Insecticon massacre in Washington.

She didn't like having other people's lives placed on her shoulders. She was a carefree individual, simply letting life carry her down whatever path it chose. Perhaps she should had fought more against the currents, maybe she wouldn't have ended up where she was now, but there was no changing her fate currently. She had resurrected Autobot X; she had placed Wheeljack into it, granting it life once more and binding her friend and tutor's very psyche and soul in purgatory. If he killed Sparkplug, his life was on her hands.

And she didn't _need_ that.

She grabbed gibbering, mad Phage and shoved her into some dark corner to whine and cry and panic because she really wasn't helping her to deal with any of this. The new Phage that stepped up to the plate she didn't exactly know anything about. Only that she was a fiery, bad-mannered smartass. She'd used her often in recent months, relying on her more and more as time went on. She had used her in the past as the tormentor of her mind, constantly whipping her to try harder, do better, prove her worth. Now, she was starting to become her, and she wasn't exactly sure what that meant or who she'd become.

She did know one thing though…

Anything was possible with her.

With a steadying breath, she whipped around the cover of the medberth and took a pop shot off at Autobot X, aiming low, away from Sparkplug. The laser blast hit its mark, searing into the giant mech's leg.

"Hey, dead weight! Over here!"

The trick worked. She drew Autobot X's attention to herself and away from Sparkplug. The mental image of it eating Sparkplug fled her mind, much to her relief. The only problem now was that she started to get images of the thing tearing her to bits, and she was suddenly filled with second thoughts but she roughly pushed those all aside. It was better her to get hurt than Sparkplug because Ratchet would be able to repair one of them and it sure as hell wasn't going to be squishy-fleshy Sparkplug after he'd been digested.

There was another problem she realized too. Her laser pistols, the ones that she had often condemned for their weak, though precise power…yeah, those ones, well she'd been right. The blast that she had just fired at Autobot X, It had shrugged off her shot like it was a mosquito bite.

Their optics locked, their bodies tense to spring and attack. The quiet before the storm. Hell, she could hear the thunder rolling in the distance. No, wait. That was just the hideous, mismatched metal monster growling at her like a wild beast, its optics flaring briefly to a crimson hue.

Before she could even register what that even meant, if anything, she suddenly found It pointing Its other arm –the one with the gun nozzle –in her direction. Down the length of the barrel she could see a light warming up, a bright, fiery glow that she knew wasn't good for her health. Not at all.


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter 2**

**She lunged to the left and rolled.**

She didn't hesitate, didn't stop to think. Just dived and rolled like Ironhide had taught her. Behind her in the spot she had just left she didn't hear the discharge of a powerful blast like she'd been expecting. Instead she heard a familiar crackling roar and intense heat on her backside. Her fuel pump moved further up in her throat and she found it now occupying itself at the back of her mouth, suffocating her. She didn't need to see what Autobot X was using against her to know what it was. She recognized the sound of the weapon, the heat, the crackling noise… Ironhide had the same thing. Hell, Inferno had the exact duplicate of the gun nozzle for one of his hands. Ironhide's just shot out of his finger tips, but it didn't change what it was. Autobot X was shooting liquid fire at her. Fucking liquid fire, the type for flamethrowers, only we were talking enough heat to melt Cybertronian metal, like in the smelting furnaces in Huffer's labs or the infamous smelting pools Jazz had told her about back on Cybertron.

Fuck. Shit…Shit!shit!shit!shit!shit!

Getting smelted into slag was not how she had envisioned dying.

She quickly ducked behind a medberth for cover, slamming herself against the solid foundation. She sucked in air through her auxiliary air intakes to calm her overheating systems. She could feel the heat from Autobot X's flamethrower wrapping around the medberth as the wild mechanism drenched it in the liquid fire. The heat licked at her metal skin like an unwanted suitor, touching her and muttering sultry words of dark purposals in her audios.

She shuttered, trying to push the thoughts aside and her close encounter of death by smelting.

"You're shaking."

Phage jumped about five feet out of her metal skin at the sound of Ratchet's voice. She did a double take over her shoulder, her hand flying to her chest where she could feel her fuel pump thrashing wildly beneath the metal surface and intricate wires, cable muscles, and gears.

"God Ratchet!" She hissed as she thumped her head back against the medberth. "Don't scare me like that!"

The CMO hardly paid attention to her as he fiddled with his fingers. She watched from her prephial vision as a metal tip for his pointer finger peeled apart, revealing a syringe that he had embedded into his hand millennia ago.

One of the reasons why Ratchet was one of the most famous and renowned surgeon's on Cybertron (and thereby the only medical officer that she would allow to even touch her) was because he had had the tools of his trade embedded throughout his body –one of the first, in fact. He was a walking Medbay comprised into one individual and it made him vastly important to the Autobot forces. His optics functioned in part as a scanner allowing him to diagnosis his patient without ever having to prep an analytical machine himself while some of the tools that he could deploy from his arms included laser scalpels and wrenches. The tips of his fingers were reserved for syringes, among other things, while the necessary medical liquids used for the needles were stored in his arm, much the same way as Ironhide's chemistry set worked in his. He had others she knew, but she didn't know the extent of it, only that everything he ever needed that could be in a Medbay could be found in him, minus extra armor plating unless he decided to use his own metallic hide for that.

She started to get a little nervous when she realized that he was prepping one of the syringes. "What are you doing?"

The needle extended from his forefinger and he observed it keenly, flicking the device with his other hand to see if the liquid inside would come out. "Due to your relative new status as a solider to combat situations Phage, your shaking informs me that you're suffering from hyper-tension. You need a mild sedative if you're going to be of much assistance."

She felt her cheeks flare in indignation. The femme tightened her hold on her pistols, desperately restraining the desire to shoot Ratchet in the foot with them. "I don't _**need**_ a sedative." She ground out through clenched teeth. Her words proved all too true. She felt a bit of her panic leaking away as it was replaced by her heated temper. She could make it through this.

She _could_.

Ratchet glanced at her and his optics narrowed in that grim way that they did when he was using the diagnostic implants. She could feel his ageless optics searching her over. Considering her. Weighing her words, **weighing** her.

"I would have to disagree."

"I don't _need_the sedative! I'm perfectly _fine_! What we should be doing is figuring out how to get Sparkplug away from Autobot X!"

A tense silence hung between them for what seemed like an inflexible eternity. Her side panels twitched, feeling the heat from Autobot X's flamethrower eating away at the medberth. They didn't have much time and Ratchet _must_ have known that too. He broke optic contact with her first, looking away towards the medberth as if he could see right through it. The syringe retracted back into his forefinger and gradually covered up. She resisted the urge to sigh in relief, but felt it all the same as the sensation washed through her systems.

"Your right, about Sparkplug that is, but neither one of us has enough firepower to take him down."

"I know that. We could use our ."

"I've already called for backup. Optimus Prime and the other Autobot officers will be here shortly."

"So we just wait as A-X crushes the life out of Sparkplug!"

Ratchet shot her a look. "A-X?"

"Oh! Never mind!" Phage growled out as she slammed her head against the berth, her CPU racing in overtime as she tried to get control of her nerve-wrecked body. "We just…you tackle A-X."

"What?"

"I'll act as decoy."

Ratchet's optics grew to the size of hot plates. "You'll get turned to slag!"

"Well one of us has too!" Ratchet looked at her as if she'd gone crazy but before he could say how insane that statement was and assess her mental condition from there, she jerked away from the medberth and looked on at it in horror as it started to melt. "No time for delays! I'll distract him!"

"What?! Phage, wait!"

She didn't wait. Couldn't. No time. No time…

She whirled around the medberth and took several pop shots off at A-X's legs as she skirted along the floor for another medberth. From the corner of her vision she saw Ratchet hesitate briefly before he took off out of her line of sight.

"Come on defect!" Phage grinned devilishly, ignoring the stabbing pain that bite into the side of her cracked flexi-face. "I'm over here! Over here!"

The blasts she fired at him meant nothing to the thick armored metal Frankenstein, but it did the trick in focusing the monstrosity's anger on her. With a roar It redirected the smelting flame her way. With the skill and grace that she'd performed with before despite the fact that her body felt like lead, she dived and rolled across the golden floor as she came up behind the cover of another medberth.

She emerged behind her latest safety breathing in somewhat cooler breaths of air that weren't threatening to melt her innards with the dry heat of a volcano. The sudden spike in room temperature was having an effect on her. Her chassis started hurting and her headache took on a life on its own as it began to pulse like a beating heart.

End game. Flee. Escape.

She wanted this to be over.

Gradually, she drew herself up on shaking arms and knees and abruptly panicked as she realized that her foot was painfully hot. With a cry she whipped herself over and began kicking her left foot frantically to get the liquid fire off her foot. With a bit of time, and the use of her heel, she managed to save her foot – partly. The paintjob was ruined, just like the tip of her foot was now bubbly and pop marked. Not exactly pretty, but who ever looks down?

Phage collapsed against the medberth in relief, glad beyond measure that it had only been her foot to get nicked and not even that badly. The damage was hardly noteworthy and it certainly wasn't going to dampen her movement capability.

"Ratchet! RATCHET!" Sparkplug screamed out and Phage jerked at the cry, remembering Sparkplug. She glanced over and caught sight of Ratchet's lumbering white body as he collapsed against the far wall as if all the life in his limbs had been drained from him. Her breath caught in her throat, her fuel pump thumping like a drum in her chassis. Had she failed? Had Autobot X noticed him and…

Suddenly, the klaxon alarms were blaring–

-and Phage jumped at the sudden sound as it bored into her CPU and caused her cranial surge to take a turn for the worse. The crimson light that bathed the Medbay from the klaxon alarms agitated her sensitive optics. She doubled over with a moan, covering her face with her knees and her audios with her hands. The pain in her chassis grew, becoming a sharp wrenching pain. It was searing, a white hot lance that spread through her veins like lava.

'_Oh god! Oh God! Take it away! Take me away!'_

Her CPU decided to tip on her. She gasped in misery as her headache shifted abruptly and went from pounding on all dimensions of her cranium and focused its full force behind her optics. Static exploded across her vision, color washing away as it became overlaid by those irritating black, grey, and white dots.

WAAAAWEEEER…PHA…WAAAAAWEEEER…AGE! …WAAAA-UN!

In the resulting state of delirium (because she couldn't think of a better term to describe the melted mess that her CPU had become) that gripped her CPU on the onslaught of her brutal headache, she thought that she heard Sparkplug screaming her name, but the words were washed away on the tides of the klaxon alarms. She brushed it aside, chalking it up to her tormenting thoughts…until some force wrapped around her throat and lifted her up into the air, so far up that her feet left the ground. She was hanging in mid-air, or she was floating. Hovering? Had somebody turned off the G-force on the ship?

No. The force that had grabbed her throat began to crush her delicate neck cables. She gasped for sweet breath even as her defunct optics fritz and crackled. Her video feed was corrupt with the blasted static and error messages. Occasionally it would let up to where she could discern certain shapes from the nothingness and she could see the colors of reality again. In one such instance she was able to make out the thing that had grabbed her –Autobot X.

She was face to face with the beast himself. A-X narrowed his optics at her, his lip components curled back into a quivering snarl. Phage's optics grew wide as she stared back a bit nervously.

"Eh, hi?"

If this had been in any other circumstance, she may have burst out laughing at herself.

Autobot X snarled at her again, and began crushing her neck with a black hand that had priorly been the gun nozzle. She coughed and spluttered, tried to make a sound of protest, a cry for help, but it was hopeless. She struggled as much she could while Sparkplug, still hanging helplessly from Autobot X's other hand, did enough screaming for the both of them. A-X squeezed her throat yet again, growling viciously at her, optics wild with madness as It sought to put a stop to her frantic attempts of release. The result increased her headache tenfold and caused another spell of static to lance across her vision, followed in quick succession by flickering error messages. She started gasping for breath, thrashing out with her legs and prying at his hand with hers as if they were claws. She kicked her feet out to find some sort of support, any support to help alleviate the pressure he was putting on her, but she wasn't sure if it would help. Her fuel pump started working overtime in her chassis again, pounding away as if it would burst outwards. She panicked, or was beginning too. She couldn't tell anymore. She just acted in any way she could, which wasn't good enough. Her vision worsened and internal readings reported a sharp increase in her core temperature, especially around her spark chamber. She really started to panic when her lungs started to burn sooner than she would have liked.

No. wait. She didn't have lungs anymore. Vents. Weren't they vents? No…she was synthetic, so yes, lungs. Synthetic lungs. Right? No? Crap. She couldn't remember. Didn't _care_ too remember. Some parts of her body still ached from her metamorphosis, even after several months.

Her mind did another three-sixty and she thought she was going to hurl if she could find the space in her constricted throat to do so. She started to see stuff in the static, wisps of colors, faces. She didn't realize what with her headache and cloudy CPU and current condition that what she was seeing couldn't possibly constitute for the situation occurring all around her. She still felt A-X strangling her, his growls of rage, the blaring klaxon alarms, her burning body slowly melting from the inside out, but it had become distant somehow…

The images she saw, it was the Medbay and Ratchet as he stood towering over her giving another one of his lectures. He was speaking, and his nasally voice presided over all other noises –or was that that the other sounds grew dim? – almost washing them out. It was calm and comforting, sounding almost right in her audios…

///

'_We need to breathe just as much as humans do. The only way I can explain it to you so that you'd understand is that we: Autobots, Decepticons, all Cybertronians, need to breath to keep our systems from overheating and melting down.'_

What the frag…?

'_Melting down?'_ [It was her voice, but somewhere deep down in a part of her CPU that was still sane; she knew that she couldn't have said it.]

[Ratchet nodded his head, but it wasn't so much of out of seeing that she knew he did it, but out of remembering.]

She realized then that her memory core had been accessed somehow, and she was reliving a memory.

'_Think of it in terms of your primitive computers. They require ventilation to keep them from overheating and crashing. The concept is similar for us if over simplifying.'_

'_So don't stop breathing. Got'cha.'_

[Ratchet rolled his optics at her. She wasn't sure if that was a human trait that he had picked up, or if it was custom even back on Cybertron.] _'I hope you don't talk so sarcastically to Ironhide.'_

[She scrunched her nose up at him, giving him 'the look.'] _'Yeah, right. And get fifty rounds around the track while I'm at it? No thank you.'_

_///_

The voices started to fade, giving way to the howling of the klaxon alarms, the snarling of A-X and her own sense of urgency.

That was it. She was tripping, and tripping _hard_. She didn't know what stuff it was that Ratchet had given her, but she was going to make damn sure that he never gave it to her again.

Her static started to clear up and with it the visions and the voices. And as they left, a bit of her sanity came back with her as she struggled in A-X's grasp, gasping for the precious air that she needed to survive. Her lungs –or whatever part of her new anatomy that it was – felt like it was about to explode. Her spark chamber had grown intensely hot, like liquid metal, burning, searing, tearing: it was heartburn at its worst multiplied by a hundred fold only because she knew, given her new state of body, that the heat produced from her spark chamber was melting its container without proper ventilation. She was melting from the inside out.

Oh god.

OH GOD!

Melting from the inside out –where the fuck was her Calvary? Where was her knight in shining armor come to rescue the damsel in distress?

Damn it all to hell how much she hated the thought of that.

Her chest had become a searing, pre-melting mess, the pain growing in swift progression that frightened her with its rapidity. Her headache persisted, hammering, pulsating mercilessly away behind her optics and causing strain on them, causing the static to grow worse and worse. The force on her throat became nearly as intense as the problems with the rest of her body. The pressure of Autobot-X's hands became crushing. She gagged for breath, desperately seeking just one tiny breath to cool her redlining systems, but to no avail. Error messages scrawled across her vision in packs, and eventually started to overrun her sight, hiding away the static behind windows of codes and numbers and technical terms that she couldn't grasp – wouldn't grasp. Thought was quickly becoming a chore, an incapability. Her thoughts were slipping, her mind drifting…

Her strength waning.

'_Is this how it feels to die?'_


	3. Chapter 3

**Chapter 3**

"**LET HER GO YOU SCRAP PIECE MONSTER!"**

Sideswipe! It was Sideswipe's voice!

Fuck.

He wasn't the type of cavalry she'd been hoping for.

The pressure on her throat lifted momentarily and she seized the opportunity. Phage sucked down a breath of air and relished the refreshing sensation as her body cooled. Static and some error messages scattered, returning her sight to her briefly as her systems were brought back down into the green, but what she had predicted with Sideswipe's –and without fail, Sunstreaker's- arrival became reality in a burst of laser fire. Phage tried to shriek in protest but quickly found that to vocalize even a whisper grated on her vocal processor. Her voice came out hoarse, screeching, the delicate sensory and gears that comprised her vocalizer damaged.

The situation drastically degraded.

Noises were a cluttered mess to her audio sensors. She knew that somebody was shouting in protest, but the words bled with the blaring klaxon alarms and the discharging of the Terrible Twin's weaponry. Screams, shouts, curses, grunts, insults, words incomprehensible to her tangled mind, movement: swift, jerking, pain: searing, tearing, hot, pounding–

She couldn't keep up with everything that was going on.

There was too much…

…too much of everything!

Nothing would stop.

She just wanted it to all stop. No…

Escape_. _

'_I want out. I want out! Out! Out you hear me! Outoutoutoutout!' _A-X jerked her as the metal Frankenstein attempted to avoid the blasts. The abrupt motion shot a lance of pain along her spine. Phage…the human priorly known as Amy…wanted to cry. _'I just want my old life back damn it! Let me go! Just…I just…let me wake up…'_

Phage gasped as she hit the floor. Stunned, it took the femme a second before she processed that A-X had dropped her and another before she found it the better part of valor to scramble across the floor for safety. Phage managed to pull herself around the corner of the nearest medberth –sucking down enough breath for two as she did to cool her melting core –when she ran into another problem.

Her body wouldn't cool down.

Collapsing on her back, Phage concentrated solely on breathing, on cooling her systems, and focused on pushing the pain of her crushed neck aside as she tried to keep herself from panicking. She couldn't expect her body to react immediately. It would take time…time…

There wasn't enough time.

The mind fog previously clouding her thinking lifted and she was finally able to grasp the meaning of some of the more important and immediate error messages flashing in front of her vision. Low-Energon reserves, body temperature 107degrees and rising, core failure, stasis lock pending, and…

Oh look! The error messages came with a little window detailing her body and where the major damages lie…only everything on the little mini-she seemed to be flashing some promenate red-orange color. Her spark chamber itself was a bright red while her body…

Her mental eye caught sight of another message detailing some report about subatomic damage, but before she had enough time to read more into that, Phage felt a wash of intense heat grip her spark chamber and bleed through into her right arm.

The femme suddenly found her voice again in the form of a scream.

///

The feminine shriek cut through the air, outdoing the klaxon alarms and startling Sideswipe and Sunstreaker with the anguished, piercing cry. Mouth agape in horror, Sideswipe could only stare in shock at A-X. Unfrazzled by the alien cry like the Autobots, Autobot-X continued his attack. Snarling, Sunstreaker lunged for his brother, tackling him to the ground behind the cover of some medberths before A-X turned him into Swiss-cheese with the lasers It was now shooting out of Its gun nozzle.

"Slag face!" Sideswipe growled at his twin as Sunstreaker executed a neat roll off the red Lamborghini and slammed himself against the medberth, his rifle at the ready. Sideswipe sat up, inspecting his paintjob. "If you've scratched my chassis…"

"Thought you'd be more worried about the fragging Trans-Sync."

Sideswipe made to make some hot retort, then shut his mouth and chose instead to stare quizzically at Sunstreaker. Sideswipe settled against the medberth as the laser fire continued to rain down all around them, pinning them to their spot. The scream itself had died off, giving reign back to the klaxon alarms, but the absence of the horrible scream made Sideswipe all the more worried.

"You don't think…it could have been Sparkplug."

Sunstreaker popped his head around the corner of the medberth, took off a few pop shots, and then slipped back around. The laser fire increased around Sunstreaker's side, and then swiftly stopped as the juggernaut roared in frustration.

"Nope. The human's still functioning."

"Autobot-X dropped Phage. I saw her scramble around –"

"Didn't scan her did you? The temperature of her spark chamber was far beyond acceptable ranges. The Trans-Sync's probably dead. Core meltage. I've heard its one of the most painful ways to terminate."

Sideswipe threw Sunstreaker a withering glare. "Phage has _not_ terminated!"

Sunstreaker made an indistinguishable noise as he glanced away from Sideswipe, clearly contemplating retaliation. Sideswipe couldn't believe the coldness in his brother's face, let alone that his spark had split from his. "On the count of three, we'll both jump out and fire."

"You've gotta be missing a few screws. Remember the last time we went up against that thing?"

"Think of this as payback." Sideswipe looked skeptical, but Sunstreaker quickly wiped away any uncertainty by saying, "It's the only way to safely inspect the Trans-Sync."

"_Phage_." Sideswipe growled, but Sunstreaker acted as though he hadn't heard him.

"One…two…three!"

Reluctantly, Sideswipe whipped around the cover of the medberth with Sunstreaker and started pummeling the goliath known as Autobot-X with a face full of laser.

"No! Wheeljack! What are you –AHUAAAAA!"

Sideswipe and Sunstreaker gaped in horror, their fingers stalling on the trigger of their weapons as Autobot-X threw Sparkplug at them with a guttural scream of frustration. Neither one knew what to do. Sparkplug was going to die. He was going to die with a terrible crunch of breaking bones and make a brilliant crimson splatter against the wall.

Sideswipe marked Sparkplug's death-flight through the air even as he and Sunstreaker dropped to the floor to avoid the human-turned-missile. Sideswipe dropped and rolled for cover behind the medberth opposite the entrance to the door.

As he came up behind his newfound cover, several things seemed to happen at once. The first thing Sideswipe's CPU logged was that the klaxon alarms had stopped ringing, only to be replaced by another noise that was a gibbering, guttural mess. Sideswipe blinked as his processor tried to identify the noise, his racing CPU desperately attempting to discern events from one another and categorize them as he sought the doomed Sparkplug. The red Lamborghini gaped as his optics landed on the human floating through the air, arms extended in jubilation as if welcoming death. Sparkplug's lip components were flapping, saying something, and he realized that the new noise was coming from him, but he still couldn't quite hear what he was saying. Sideswipe was more preoccupied with trying to figure out where the blue sphere incasing Sparkplug had come from. It had slowed his speed drastically, but not completely. The human continued to hover forward, steadily, towards the only exit from Medbay.

Sideswipe finally glanced over, blinking, as his CPU finally caught up with everything and deciphered what it was that Sparkplug was saying as his optics landed on…

"Trailbreaker!" Sparkplug wept in relief, his arms reaching for the black mech as if reaching for an angel. "God! I've never been so happy to see you in all my life!"

"ARRAAG!"

Sideswipe twisted around, catching sight of A-X over his shoulder strut as the giant mech shifted weapon modes again and shot Trailbreaker with the flamethrower. With a speed that neither Twin thought the lumbering Trailbreaker possessed, the black Autobot plucked Sparkplug from the air in the same simultaneous instant that he reshaped his force field and created a protective dome around the entrance area. Silently relieved, Sideswipe and Sunstreaker's twin devil smirks continued to grow as Bumblebee, Jazz, Mirage, Prowl, and Optimus came barreling into the room.

"Nice to see that you 'bots finally decided to join the after-party." Jabbed Sunstreaker, but his attention was focused on Prime who, if he had noticed, chose to ignore the yellow Lamborghini.

Sideswipe glanced from the Prime and the particularly _displeased_ look streaming out from his slited optics and back to the force field. Autobot-X had cut off the flamethrower and as the liquid fire spilt off the force field Sideswipe saw that it had fallen on the floor and eaten through it. Seam and sparks sizzled up from the new trench.

Ratchet was going to be pissed.

"Status." Prowl toned as he entered in the Medbay and took his post beside Prime.

Trailbreaker handed Sparkplug carefully over to Prime, who in turn handed him off to Bumblebee and gave the order to get him to safety. Without little ado, Bumblebee took off with Sparkplug as Trailbreaker explained the situation. "Seems like Wheeljack's lost control of Autobot-X just like Spike had before. No sign of Ratchet or Phage."

"Autobot-X had Phage earlier on in the fight." Sideswipe supplied to his superior officers as he held his ground crouched behind the medberth of his choosing. "He dropped her and she took off around the medberth with Wheeljack's body on it."

"The Trans-Sync screamed shortly after." Sunstreaker threw in, drawing a wide-eyed look from Mirage and Jazz. "Her spark chamber was registering _red_ on my scanners. When we find her, she's probably going to have a huge slagging hole where her chassis should be."

"Shut the frag up, Sunstreaker!"

"Stow it lover-bot. Your pansy-aft girlfriend's dead."

"Both of you, quiet!" Optimus snapped at the two as he pinned both Twins to their spots with a hard, piercing glare. Sideswipe and Sunstreaker cut their vocalizers after the warning glare from Prime, and then simply watched as their commander took in the whole situation. Finally, Prime's glare landed on Wheeljack in Autobot-X's body. A-X stared back at him in a rare display of cool control that would have unnerved the most war-hardened of them.

"Wheeljack…?" Prime tested as he stepped closer to the edge of Trailbreaker's force field, making sure to adjust the level on his cannon rifle. A-X's lip components started to shift into a snarl, a certain berserk glint in its optics. "Wheeljack!" Prime bellowed with the true commanding disposition of a war officer, shocking A-X back into that complacent, listening visage it had worn briefly before. "Look at me. We're your friends and I know you don't want to hurt us." Prime's voice grew passive, but a certain hard edge underlined every word. "Fight this, Wheeljack. Fight it. I know you can do it."

A low growl was Autobot-X's response, but there was something off.

Prime caught sight of Its fingers twitching and Optimus's optics flared briefly with a certain cunning glint. "Wheeljack, I know you're still in there and you don't mean any of this, just like Spike didn't mean anything he did while he was in it. Remember, do you remember that? We had lost Spike for a bit, and Megatron tried to convince him to join them. If you lose this battle Wheeljack, you'll follow a similar path. Megatron will ask you to join them, if he decides that you're not too much of a loose cannon."

"N-n-no! NO!" Autobot-X dropped to its knees with a heavy clank that reverberated throughout Medbay. He gnashed his steel teeth and shook his head as he pressed the palms of his hands against his temples. "I'm not a Decepticon! I'm not!" A-X threw himself to the ground, pounding it with one fist as he repeated 'I'm not!' I'm not!' over and over again.

Prime smiled and stowed his rifle back into subspace. "Trailbreaker, drop the force field."

"Positive Prime?" Posed Prowl. "Wheeljack can just as easily slip back –"

"Drop the field." The tone of Prime's voice left no room for questioning. The force field dissipated and Prime strode forward, easily overstepping the sizzling trench and making his way over to Wheeljack. Optimus knelt down beside the besieged mech and gently touched his shoulder strut. "Wheeljack…" Prime muttered softly once he had gone quiet and starting shaking on the floor. "Have you returned to functional status?"

"N-n-yeeesss. I need –_gasp_—I need R-Ra-Ratchet!"

"I'm here." Prime blinked as the Autobot CMO popped out from around a medberth. Ratchet was already messing with the gadgets in his fingers and critically analyzing Autobot Wheeljack as he approached. "What is it?"

"There…isn't! There isn't a side affect! Sparkplug—ugh!—Sparkplug never erased…personal codes!"

Ratchet's optics bugged out and nearly threatened to pop right out of his cranium. "He what?!!" Wheeljack began to repeat what he had said, but Ratchet cut him off. "Of course! The personal codes! Voices! Spike had said -- Why didn't _**I**_ think of that!"

Wheeljack sat up and for the first time and they saw his face twisted in the throes of his mental struggle for supremacy. "Need ta take me off-line. Erase 'em all. I …I keep hearing everyone! But—it's all gibberish! None of the codes match but mine and…and hatred! Everyone's hate! War! Combat! Ratchet!" Wheeljack gasped as made to grab for the medic, but Optimus held him back. "It's the only thing getting through!"

"Calm down, Wheeljack!" Ratchet said in exasperation as he started to rub at his aching temples. "I'll fix the problem in no time flat! Just –"

"Screw 'Jack! Ratchet, get over here!"

Ratchet looked over to Sunstreaker, Sideswipe, and Mirage with the rest of the officers, a tight frown on his faceplates. "What is it _now_?"

"Phage!" Sideswipe said in frustration as he, Sunstreaker, and Mirage stood overlooking the femme helplessly. Out of the three of them, Sidewipe looked the most repulsed while Mirage and Sunstreaker looked calm yet, there was a certain perplexion on Mirage's white and blue flexi-face. "She's alive! And –slag Ratchet! I'm no medic but…s-something's wrong with her!"

Almost with a cruel smugness, Sunstreaker said, "Smokes pouring out of her. Told you she was terminated."

A horse, condemning voice growled out, "'Streakers!" Sideswipe, Sunstreaker, and Mirage all jumped back as Phage came alive and reached out to grab Sunstreaker with her left arm. Sunstreaker quickly shuffled away from the femme, a horrified look plastered across his eerily perfect face as Phage's hand, twisted and contorted into a grip resembling a claw, missed him. Her azure optics bored into him with a fiery determined inner glow that Sunstreaker had never seen from her before.

"Shit!" Sunstreaker swore. "You're alive?!"

"I _hate_ you."

Sunstreaker's mouth fell open as his flexi-face contorted into a look of confusion and shock.

"Out of my way!" Ratchet rumbled as he came at the small group in a white flash. In quick succession, he had rammed Sideswipe in the true honored fashion of a hockey-player checking the other team member into the wall, then rebounding off the red Lamborghini shoved Sunstreaker out of his way, effectively sending both Twins to the ground some few feet away. Mirage, who had seen Ratchet coming, had made himself scarce of the CMO's reach.

"Primus, 'Jack! I'm gonna need your help!"

Prime shot a swift glance at the terrified Wheeljack beside him, and made a call. "Wheeljack's not going to be able to assist you Ratchet."

"Then get fucking Perceptor and Swoop in here damn it!" Ratchet growled, his engine revving in vexation as he dropped down to his knees and began extending the necessary equipment out from his arms and hands.

"No, Ratchet! NO!"

Startled, Ratchet barely had enough time to turn around before he found Mirage on him. The mech grabbed him by his shoulder strut and swung him to the ground. Ratchet banged his cranium on impact and was left in a light daze that only deepened as Mirage continued his assault and made as if to jump on him.

"What do you think you're doing?!"

"I could ask the same thing!"

"You'll terminate her!"

Ratchet's engine revved as he shook the haze from his processor and sat up, glaring balefully at the silver and blue mech. "Me! _You'll_ terminate her if you don't stand aside!" With little further ado, Ratchet moved to aid her, but again Mirage intercepted as Ratchet moved at her with his trade of tools but this time Mirage grabbed him.

"Get off me!

Mirage kept a firm grip on Ratchet as the lithe Autobot turned ugly. Sun-yellow optics bursting like a solar flare, his mouth component twisting into a hideous snarl, Mirage shook Ratchet as he growled, "Listen to me you second-rate, portentous, medic! You're going to kill her! You hear me! If you'd take a moment to perform a deep scan and observe her systems properly, you'll see what I'm talking about!"

"Sunstreaker! Sideswipe! If ever there was a time I needed your assistance…!"

The two Autobots came forward, but Mirage's newfound brutality took a turn for the worse as he whipped out his photon rifle from subspace and shot a warning blast in-between Sunstreaker and Sideswipe's heads. The two mech's stopped short, optics wide, Sideswipe's mouth agape as they tried to process what he had just done.

"Next time I _will_ hit! And it _will_ be somewhere _vital_!" Mirage growled at the two. "Don't believe me? Just remember who the best sharpshooter onboard is!"

Out of everybody in the room, Ratchet looked the most surprised as the usual complacent Mirage focused his attention back on him. "Don't fuck with me." Mirage breathed softly to the medic so that only he could hear. "I know your past, Ratchet. I know how you sit in your office and grieve over every mech you ever lost. I'm not going to let this happen again." Mirage released him roughly, shoving him to the ground as he towered over him. Maintaining his foul disposition, Mirage pointed to the femme that choked and spluttered for breath as if she were drowning. Occasionally her body convulsed, her fingers and side panels twitching, but her whimpers told them that she was still alive. "Scan her," Mirage commanded, "unless you want to add another name to your extensive list. _Then_ aid her properly!"

A red blur rammed Mirage from the back, sending both him and his assailant to the floor in a loud crash. In the following string of vibrant curses in both Cybertronian and Earthen, Ratchet managed to identify Sideswipe as he and Mirage wrestled on the floor. It wasn't long before Sideswipe, by far the heavier and more lethal combatant, subdued the weaker Mirage and relieved him of not only his rifle, but expertly pinned him to the floor. Prowl and Trailbreaker were along not shortly to take over the situation. After slapping energy cuffs on the mech Prowl began listing off the string of codes he'd broken and the charges he was being assaulted with before they dragged him out of the Medbay. Mirage didn't fight them. He only shot Ratchet a condemning glare that said it all.

If he screwed up, killed Phage (Mirage's allegedly _only_ friend now that he thought about it), he would make certain that Ratchet paid the ultimate price.

Ratchet gaped at Mirage as they took him away, startled by such behavior from somebody like him. He had never seen such behavior from Mirage before, not even in combat, and his tone – he seemed so sure of something…

Something…

…Something _was_ wrong –

And Ratchet was beginning to have second doubts about his own quick diagnosis of the problem, only Mirage's suggestion of a deep scan would take more time than he thought he had, and by then, when and if he diagnosed Phage's problem, he doubted that she'd be alive for him to solve it.

But then, if this was a core meltage like he thought from Wheeljack cutting off air flow required to keep her spark chamber cool, she should have already been dead.

Suddenly uncertain, hands shaking as he bite the inside of his lip, Ratchet turned back to Phage, debating over whose advice he should take –his or Mirage's.

Across the Medbay where he had been left alone, another mech wallowed in misery. Hidden out of sight at the first chance he had got, Wheeljack cradled himself into a tight ball with his knee joints pressed up against his chest plate and his head buried against his knees. His fingers dug into his helmet and he muttered ceaselessly to himself in his endless battle to maintain his sanity in the sea of conflicting codes, and the actions he had committed while he had lost his reason.

"Phage! –_Phage!_" Wheeljack moaned in self-horror, in self-hate, already certain that he had killed the sole femme onboard _The Ark_, on the planet Earth, perhaps the last femme in the whole galaxy –certain that he had terminated the femme that, dare he say, he had grown a more than friendly demeanor for. "What have I done to you?!"


End file.
